American-Arab community. But few of those possible recruits are willing to put their lives on hold for a year or more as they await clearance. Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, told me that he could circumvent the security backlog in special cases, and he has done so on sev- eral occasions. McConnell, upon landing in Far- mington, delivered his speech before the government contractors. "There was a study done in 1955," he told them. "One conclusion it came to was that it was an abomination that the government takes fifteen months to clear someone! I'm happy to tell you we got that down to eighteen months." The contractors laughed in recognition. 'When I agreed to take the D.N.I. post, the first surprise was being told, 'Fill out the form,' " Mc- Connell continued. "I've been cleared for fortyyears! Then the agent shows up. He wants to know if I am a Communist and do I advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S." That experience prompted McCon- nell to reflect on what causes members of the intelligence community to turn into traitors. "Look back at all the spies we've had in our history," he said. "About a hundred and thirty. How many did it for money? A hundred and twenty-eight." He contrasted the gov- ernment's security-clearing process with the vetting that multinational banks do for American and foreign employees- the process can take less than ten work- ing days. The opportunities for fraud at such a bank are obvious, he noted: "If I can slow down the movement of money by one single second, I can make mil- lions through arbitrage." How do com- panies prevent such losses? "Every key- stroke can be monitored." McConnell advocates a simplified clearance proce- dure that will take a month or less. Under his plan, it will be much easier for first- and second-generation Amer- icans to enter the intelligence commu- nity. The trade-off will be that they will be subjected to what he calls "life- cycle monitoring"-that is, constant surveillance. Flying back to Washington after the speech in Pennsylvania, McConnell said, "I'm trying to change the rules, say- ing if you want to be in this community, here are the conditions of employment." He mentioned Jonathan Pollard, a for- mer civilian analyst for U.S. Naval In- telligence, who pleaded guilty to espio- nage in 1986. "He transferred reams and reams and reams of data to the Is- raelis! Well, in today's world that stuffis not sitting on a shelf somewhere-it's in a database. So if you want to transfer it you've got to print it or get an electronic copy or whatever. That's what I mean by monitoring." I asked McConnell ifhe believed that AI Qgeda was really the greatest threat America faces. " N all " h . d " T 0, no, no, not at , e sa!. er- rorism can kill a lot of people, but it can't fundamentally challenge the ability of the nation to exist. Fascism could have done that. Communism could have. I think our issue going forward is more engage- ment with the world in terms of keeping it on a reasonable path, so another ism doesn't come along and drive it to one ex- treme or another. And we have to have some balance in terms of equitable distri- bution of wealth, containment of conta- gious disease, access to energy supplies, and development of free markets. There are national-security ramifications to global warming." He looked down at the patchwork quilt of the Pennsylvania countryside. His thoughts quickly turned back to ter- rorism. "One of the things I worry about most would be something like a pan- demic, particularly ifit could be weapon- ized, like avian flu," he continued. "You could turn that into a human virus. You could have fifty million to five hundred million deaths." I n 2005, the intelligence community informed President Bush that the greatest danger in the Middle East came from Iran. An N.I.E. on the subject de- clared that Iran intended to build a nu- clear weapon. Some of that information came from a purloined laptop containing drawings of an implosion device and in- formation about the history of the Ira- nian nuclear effort. But there was little supporting evidence, and the President was frustrated that reliable intelligence was so difficult to obtain. Soon after- ward, the C.I.A. created an Iran Opera- tions Division. There was already an Iran mission manager in the O.D.N .I., whose job was to coördinate all the available re- sources in the community. Those efforts were being folded into a new N.I.E. on Iran, which had been demanded by Congress; the report, ex- pected last spring, was mysteriously de- layed. In mid-November, McConnell said that he did not intend to declassifY any part of the N .I.E. On occasion, the key judgments ofN.I.E. reports have been made public, though they are gen- erally kept secret so that analysts can present their findings with candor. "But here's the real reason," McConnell said. "If I have to inform the public, I am in- forming the adversary." He used the ex- . '0' ,., '1 always gainftve to seven enemies over the holidays."